


My Heart Will Be Blacker

by impossiblyawesome



Series: Something I Need (oneshots) [6]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Betrayal, Gun Violence, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblyawesome/pseuds/impossiblyawesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You could’ve gotten all of us killed.” Enjolras announces coldly. “But that’s what you wanted, I take it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Will Be Blacker

**Author's Note:**

> In which Les Amis de l'ABC have been betrayed, and the price must be paid for it.

“How did they know?” He says brusquely, voice reaching a crescendo in an angry bellow. “ _How did they know?_ ”

 “They mentioned having an informant, having someone on the inside. It’s possible they’re just trying to create internal turmoil, but it doesn’t sound good. We’re not safe anymore. They gave us a name.”

“Who?” His mind reels through the possibilities.

Combeferre leads him to the door, places one cautioning hand on Enjolras’ shoulder and the other, defensive, upon the doorknob.

“Swear you’ll keep your head. No matter what.”

“Let me in, Combeferre.”

“Swear it.”

Enjolras grits his teeth. He throws Combeferre’s hand off the door, but shoots him a withering look before he undoes the bolt.

Truth. Equality. Liberty. Justice. “I know what we fight for.”

—

The room is dark, dank, underground, all stone and cold walls. His footsteps echo as he marches in. It takes every measure of control not to fall back against the door as soon as it thuds closed behind him.

Imagination and dread and forethought never could have prepared him, no matter who it was, but the dark, dishevelled hair, startling blue eyes and crooked mouth of the figure bound up in the chair hit him like a tornado at full throttle.

No. No no no. The same word hammers away redundantly in his head.  _No._  Not this.

“You.” He issues the word thickly, the sounds half-mangled in his mouth.

Grantaire lifts his head a little, drawing one side of his face from the shadows. The shallow pool of light from the lone bulb hanging above gives no comfort at all.

“You could’ve gotten all of us killed.” Enjolras announces coldly, imposing it as a sentence upon Grantaire’s head. “But that’s what you wanted, I take it.”

His lip curls in newfound loathing. It is a thousand times the measure of his prior disdain.

“That’s not -” Grantaire seems about to protest.

He doesn’t want to hear excuses.

“You work for them. Reported to them. Betrayed us, betrayed the cause. Do you deny it?”

“I can’t.” Grantaire’s teeth are tightly gritted, as though he has had to force the truth out with terrible effort. “I wish I could.”

“I should’ve realised.” Enjolras spits, trying to force the facts into his head. “How much more suspicious could it have seemed? A man, here to make  _friends_. A man with little interest in our cause, no intention of seeing us succeed… How could I have been so  _blind, so_ _stupid_  -?” He shouldn’t admit it.

“Stop it.” Grantaire demands. Enjolras’ eyebrows shoot up in rage.

Grantaire cuts in regardless. “You’ve never been as blind as you’re being now, so stop. If this is a trial, let me fucking speak first.”

Enjolras is sure anything Grantaire has to say will only oblige him to hate him more. Still, he waits.

“They had me. I was trying to save my skin. I didn’t think I had a choice.”

Enjolras supposes he might have expected this, but the explanation seems riddled with cowardice, cowardice he would never have burdened Grantaire with. Is it true?

“Didn’t have a choice? No, only in choosing your survival against the fight for truth and freedom, in weighing your life against the lives of thousands. Of course not. Just to keep living. I never knew you thought your life so valuable.”

“We’re not all made martyrs and saints. My life may be worthless, but it was all I  _had_ , I wasn’t just going to give it away and let those bastards win.”

“So if you can’t beat them, join them?” His drawl is icy.

“They didn’t make  _Les Amis de l’ABC_  sound any better than  _they_  looked, you know. So I came, and I listened -” Grantaire ploughs on with reckless abandon, “- and I started to understand, and I tried to help. All your plans, all your ambitions - didn’t I find the flaws? Didn’t I help you see? Didn’t I make you better?” His face is wracked with anguish.

“And when they came calling they wanted information. I only gave them breadcrumbs, false tip-offs when I could, I tried to avoid them, I swear -”

“This time they were forewarned of everything. Innocent lives were at stake.”  

“It wasn’t me this time, though! I’ve made mistakes, I know, but I haven’t spoken to them in a month, they must have found out a different way -”

“Forgive me if I find it difficult to take your word, after all this time of being lied to.”

“Apollo -”

“Don’t mock me,” Enjolras bites.

“Enjolras.”

There is a pause.

“I’m telling you that I’ve  _changed_ , shouldn’t that make a difference?” Grantaire asks, the words tumbling out in the pace of desperation. “What will it take to make you believe me?”

“I believe in giving chances.” Enjolras says, impassive. “But some things are unforgivable.”

Grantaire opens his mouth again -

“Don’t.”

Grantaire has never listened much to his instructions. “You  _know_  me, though.”

“I thought I did.” He answers stiffly. “If I  _did_ , that was before I knew this. We would never be able to trust you again.”

“Let me go, then. I’ll leave. I’ll leave you be.” He looks pained. “Permanently.”

Enjolras feels his wall of resolve start to crumble from its corners. He wishes he could. “I can’t.”

If Grantaire goes -

It is a certainty.

“If we didn’t, they would.”

But not before they had extracted all the information they could.

His gaze drags over Grantaire’s bruised eye, split lip and scratched arms, along the raw skin at his ankles, wrists and neck. He swallows carefully.

“Better this way.”

“Why not just let me go? Let them torture me then, and I’ll prove I’m on your side. I won’t tell them anything!”

“It doesn’t matter. Even if you didn’t…” Enjolras shakes his head at the thought, throat still unforgivably taut. They know their enemy well. The torture will be gruesome, the pain intolerable. And if their traitor isn’t useful, they’ll dispose of him with ease. It hurts to think it.

“Keep me, then. Here. As a prisoner. Punish me. Let me be a prisoner. Torture me, go on. I’ll take it. I will.”

Doesn’t he understand?

Enjolras can’t help his terseness. “I - we - we don’t believe in torture. You should know this.” He doesn’t think he would be able to bear seeing Grantaire in pain. Grantaire should know that, too. Enjolras doesn’t say it.

—

They are getting nowhere. Grantaire’s account, over and over, doesn’t change the facts. Doesn’t change what is his fault. Doesn’t change what is Enjolras’ fault, for allowing this all to happen.

Grantaire is yelling, now. “I’ve changed, god-fucking-damnit! I don’t report to them any more! Can’t you see that? I’m on your fucking side.”

“That’s not how it works!” Enjolras bellows in return. It is he who is entitled to the righteous fury.  “It’s not that simple. It’s not  _enough_.” He wishes it was, that this could be ignored, could grow to be forgotten.

He isn’t heartless. This is just too dangerous. Never again.

“We can’t trust you. We can’t afford to have people we can’t trust. Not now. Not anymore.”

Enjolras reminds himself that this is a traitor. Grantaire is a traitor to them all.

“You endangered our lives, and those of many more. You risked our entire operation. You could have cost us everything.”

This is about justice, not mercy. He must be killed. It is the cost of betrayal, the cost of abusing their trust, of being a threat. It will have to be done, for security and for justice.

“There’s nothing you can say.”

To kill someone, though, is to condemn himself also. Sinking to levels he cannot condone.

Can he do it? Is he capable of it?

Grantaire can only be thought of in conjunction with his friends. The people he is closest to.

Grantaire, whose presence, in spite of everything, was always valued.

Grantaire, who dredges up a spectrum of emotion, feelings Enjolras has never felt with such potency.

Grantaire, who was always the exception. His exception.

He has not reached a conclusion before words break on the shore of silence.

“Do it, then. As long as it’s you.”

It is as much a death sentence upon his own head as on Grantaire’s.

Enjolras cannot do it.

But someone has to.

He considers who to appoint to the task.

Joly, who would attempt to be humane. Bahorel, inclined enough to violence. Combeferre, able to obey reason. Courfeyrac, whose thirst for revenge might numb him to the task. Feuilly, realising the bigger picture and the greater good. Bossuet, keeping a brave face until the end. He is sure they would do it for the sake of the organisation. They might do it, just for him.

Even Jehan, capable of such compassion, might have done it. Had he not already been their dearest loss.

But Enjolras cannot ask any of them to do this. He cannot ask anyone, let alone the people he cares most about in the world.

He cannot ask them to kill someone they believed was their friend. Who, despite everything, _was_  their friend.

It would wrench them apart.

So it is left to him.

He has no choice.

_“Please.”_

He must do it.

He must.

 

Enjolras lurches forwards. Releases him of his shackles. The bindings fall away, and the knife stutters to the stone floor.

Grantaire’s eyes are awestruck moons, incandescent in the gloom.

He flexes his fingers and his wrists, stumbling off the chair in hesitation. Enjolras nods, just a fraction.

Enjolras knows the door is still closed, but Grantaire is nearer now, could reach it in just a few strides.

Instead, he has halted, reaching out. He presses his hand to Enjolras’.

Enjolras’ hand is still trembling when he is released. His lips waver.

Grasping the gun turns him to stone again.

 

Once Grantaire has seen his tears, he knows.

He doesn’t move, head lifted in an accepting gaze. It feels like the end. And then, “Enjolras, I -”

The thud of Grantaire’s body comes scarcely a second after the resounding shot.

Enjolras crumples to the floor after it.

He’s made a mistake.

Perhaps he hasn’t.

But the right thing has never felt so wrong.

He can’t look at the body. Enjolras stares at the gun instead, that instrument of death.

Cold and cruel and functional. Sharp and swift and merciless.

What is the difference between them now? He has just destroyed what he loves most, and for what?

He twists it in his grasp, gazing down the abyss of the barrel. The last thing Grantaire saw.

He tests the feel of the muzzle against his temple, lets it slide down until it is brushing against his lips. His mouth opens willingly. He wants to choke against the metal. The bullet is itching to be released.

Enjolras is dying to be released.

His hands are clammy, a finger twitching against the trigger.

But he can’t escape from this guilt. He must live with it, just as Grantaire had to die for it.

The gun peels away from his grasp, clatters down.

He crawls to the body, every inch closer a nightmarish ordeal.  

All he wants is a warmth he cannot find.

He presses his lips to Grantaire’s cheek, leaving tear-tracks of salty remorse.

If he could only drown in them.

—

A cautious knock on the door. Reality descends.

Time to carry on.

The blood rushes from Enjolras’ head as he tries to stumble to his feet, and he can no longer remember what he is fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. This takes 'capable of being terrible' and bats it into next Tuesday. I really wish this hadn't come out of the recesses of my mind.


End file.
